The most interesting discovery in connection with the river was that of the ford called ’Abârah. The name was found in one place only, and does not recur in the ten thousand names collected during the survey. It was applied by the Arabs to one of the chief fords leading over to Bashan, in the vicinity of Bethshean, where the road from Galilee comes down the tributary valley of Jezreel. ’Abârah means “ferry” or “crossing,” and there is no doubt that it is the same word which occurs in Beth Abârah, “the house of the crossing,” mentioned (John i. 28) as a place where John preached, and where, according to the usual opinion, Christ was Himself baptized.
The traditional site of the Baptism, from the fourth century down to the present day, lies much farther south, at the ford east of Jericho, where Israel crossed from Moab to Gilgal; but the distance from this spot to Cana of Galilee is so great, that it is impossible to reconcile this tradition with the New Testament account. Nor is there anything in that account which points to this southern site. The visit yearly paid by Greek pilgrims to the traditional spot, near Justinian’s old monastery of St. John on Jordan, has often been described. In the sixth century Antoninus speaks of the vast crowd which used there to assemble at the Feast of Epiphany, when it was believed that Jordan yearly rolled itself back and stood still till the baptisms were ended. “And all the men of Alexandria who have ships, with their crews, holding baskets full of spices and balsams, at the hour when the priest blesses the water, before they begin to baptize, throw those baskets into the river, and take thence holy water, with which they sprinkle their ships before they leave port for a voyage.”
It must be confessed that these offerings to the Jordan savour of paganism rather than of Christianity. Sennacherib, before he crossed the river-mouths at the Persian Gulf, threw gold and silver fishes into the water. Alexander the Great, in like manner, according to Arrian, offered a golden goblet to the Indus. In Etruria the Lake of Ciliegeto was found full of bronze ex votos, with coins and other objects, thrown by pious visitors into the water, and other instances are known in India. Nor is this a solitary example in which the practices of Byzantine Christians in Palestine are intimately connected with the older pagan rites of the country.
There is, as before said, no strong reason for accepting this traditional site for Bethabara. Some of the earliest MSS. of the Gospel read Bethania for Bethabara; but Origen disputed this reading, and Bethania is probably the later form of the Hebrew word Bashan. Bethabara is found at least in the Codex Ephraemi (C2), and Origen says that nearly all copies of the Gospel in his time had this reading. It would seem then probable that the scene is to be laid, not in the lower, but in the upper part of the Jordan Valley, where the highway from Galilee crosses over to Bashan, where, gay with flowers and carpeted with grass, the plain, dotted with stunted palms, extends between the basalt heights crowned by the Crusading Castle of Beauvoir and the long slopes round Pella, the home of the early Ebionites, who fled from the destruction of Jerusalem, and formed a quiet Christian community in the wilderness where John had baptized.
Few more beautiful scenes can be desired than that which the Jordan Valley presents in spring, when the grass has grown long, and the eye looks down from the hill on the wide stretches of varied colour which fields of wild-flowers present. The pale pink of the phlox, of the wild geranium and cistus, the yellow of the St. John’s wort and of the marigold, the deep red of the pheasant’s-eye and anemone, the lavender of the wild stock are mingled with white and purple clover, white garlic and purple salvia, snapdragons, star-daisies, and the earlier narcissus. The retem, or white broom—the juniper of Scripture—is then in blossom; the long wreaths of vapour cling to the stony mountains of Gilead, and hide its oak glades and firs. The stork pilgrims have come from the south, bringing the spring-time, and rest their weary wings by the marshy brooks round Bethshean, where the chorus of frogs day and night invites their own destruction.
But towards the south the saltness of the soil is too great for such vegetation. For five or six miles north of the Dead Sea the marl flats support only the low bushes of the alkali plant. Even half-way up the valley there are salt springs and tracts of barren salt marl; and one of our camps in the narrow gorge called Wâdy Mâleh (“the Valley of Salt”) was placed beside a hot sulphurous spring too brackish to drink. For several days we experienced much discomfort in this volcanic ravine, and had to fetch water from a considerable distance. These traces of volcanic action occur from north to south on both sides of the Jordan Valley. Beds of lava and basalt occur both west and east of the Sea of Galilee, and again east of the Dead Sea. Hot springs are found on either shore of that sea, and again at the famous Baths of Gadara, and at those of Hammath near Tiberias. Even in times long after the great fault had rent this mighty gorge from north to south, tearing asunder the sandstone beds, and bending down the chalk strata on the west, forming the chain of lakes between Hermon and the Arabah of which the Dead Sea and Sea of Galilee are the last relics, and of which we traced the raised beaches far up the valley—long after all these convulsions, fiery streams of lava flowed over the plains of Bashan, and reached the shores of Tiberias, and covered the cliffs to the west with black volcanic rocks, which form rolling downs of treeless land. Nor was this energy spent even in late historic times, when the great earthquake of 1837 overthrew the town of Safed, and raised the temperature of the hot springs in the valley.
Among the curious delusions which seem destined again and again to recover from the ridicule cast upon them by practical knowledge is the famous fallacy of a Jordan Valley Canal. Leaving aside the question of an expenditure to which that of the Panama Canal cannot compare, the theorists who have proposed this wild scheme do not seem to reflect that the whole volume of the Jordan never suffices permanently to alter the Dead Sea level. The canal then must let in much more water than the river. If it were possible to fill this valley to sea-level—as no doubt it may once have been filled by Nature herself—not only would the crops of the inhabitants be overwhelmed, with the villages of Jericho and Delhemiyeh and the town of Tiberias, but the sea so formed would extend to a breadth of from ten to twenty miles, covering all the villages and corn-lands of the valley of Jezreel. It is almost incredible that this chimera should have received serious support from influential and monied believers in the unlimited powers of modern engineering. A very simple calculation shows that were the sea admitted by such a canal as was proposed in 1883, it might pour into the valley, but could never make headway against the enormous power of evaporation in this burning gulf. Even on the higher plateau near Damascus the rushing stream of the Abana is unable to penetrate far into the desert, and sinks in the marshes of the Birket ’Ateibeh.[40]
The exploration of the valley was one of the most trying periods of the Survey. At first a constant downpour of rain, with clouds scudding along below sea-level, and storms of snow and hail interrupting the observations from the hill stations, delayed our progress. Afterwards the want of fresh water at Wâdy Mâleh proved very trying; then the marshy land round Bethshean brought fever into the camp; lastly, the intense heat obliged us to work in the very early hours of dawning light, and nearly cost me a sunstroke.